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‘Yes, she’s still here. Trust me, Katie. Come back. Promise?’

‘I—I don’t know what to say.’

‘Just say yes. It’s easy.’

‘All right,’ she sighed. ‘But I’m not making any other promises. I’m going to be in Humbersville for my sister’s wedding.’

‘I understand.’ He leaned in closer to her, and dropped a quick kiss on her lips. She was so bemused by the sudden contact that she hardly felt the car move, and she didn’t return to the real world until they flashed through Ernestville, at the foot of the mountain.

‘We’ll have to take the back streets through Erwin,’ Amanda commented as they crossed the river and swung up into the quiet residential area. ‘Main Street will be a mess. This is the second day of the Apple Festival.’

Katie, huddled up inside herself, barely made a noncommittal comment. Harry King was on her mind. Harry King and Eloise. She pictured them in her mind, Eloise sitting up straight in a plain chair, he standing behind her with one hand on her shoulder. And a big black frame to go around the pictures. Black ribbons. Misery. ‘Katie Russel’s Dilemma’, it would be called. A great photo-masterpiece for all the world to stare at. Damn him! Why couldn’t she take him at face value? Harry loves Eloise. Eloise is going to be married—soon! Why was there still this little niggling doubt in the back of her mind? Because only Eloise had said that? But
he
didn’t seem to disagree, and Lord knows he had been given ample opportunity.

And yet, every time she turned round, he was after her. And his idea of a kiss was certainly not platonic. Stripping her with his eyes, inviting her. Putting his hand on her knee. What was it with these men? Were Harry and Eubie the same type? Willing to take anything they could get their hands on? Eubie was, for sure. But Harry? Every time he touched her it was as if fire had come into her life. Every time he kissed her she was left totally drained—while he went off whistling, with that inane smile on his face!

‘Here we are,’ Amanda interrupted her.

‘Here we are where?’ Katie gasped. As far as she could tell, they were sitting in the middle of a huge parking lot, crowded with cars. ‘Is this Johnson City?’

‘More or less,’ Amanda laughed. ‘Hey, times change. Years ago all the big stores were downtown. Today, downtown is a disaster area, and all the big stores have moved out to these shopping malls on the outskirts. This is where I think we’ll find the largest selection. Montgomery Wards. No stairs, so we can get your chair around easily. Ready?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Katie laughed as she opened the door. ‘I can’t adjust to this weather, and here it is, the first week of October.’

Amanda came around to her side with the wheelchair, and helped her into it. ‘It’s been unusual this year,’ she agreed. ‘There are heavy storm-warnings out for this entire area. Thunder storms. That’s one of the reasons I want to hurry. Storms in these valleys can be pretty gross. ‘She swung the chair around and pushed it up the ramp, into the air-conditioned building.

Amanda pursued shopping the way African hunters go after lions. She moved at high speed, made instant decisions, and moved on. She had accumulated six packages, mostly clothing for herself, before Katie could make up her mind about a single item.

In the end they agreed to split up, Amanda going off to the menswear department, while Katie idled among the thousand-and-one dress racks offered. She finally committed herself to two white cotton blouses, one with a ruffle collar, the other with a detachable front bow. To match the blouses she settled on a burgundy heather stretch-woven skirt, with a back zipper. She had intended to leave it at that, respecting her rapidly shrinking supply of travellers’ cheques, until she came across the rack of two-piece units on sale, and lost her heart to a little cranberry set with a ruffled front, long sleeves, and a pleated separate skirt. She was doing arithmetic in her head, fumbling with her wallet, when Amanda caught
up
with her, and they went out to the car.

They started back under darkened skies. Flashes of lightning could be seen off to the west, over Washington County, but Amanda drove sedately on. They made small talk. Clothes they had bought, or had not. Babies. There was a little touch of envy in Katie’s comments about that. The Equal Rights Amendment, and why it had failed to pass the first time. And with it all, as they drifted by miles of apple orchards, a lessening of tensions swept over Katie, a willingness to suspend fact and belief, and to continue to live on dreams. When they came around the bend into Main Street, in Erwin, Amanda brought the car to a halt, and they both laughed until tears came. A little parade was straggling down the street in front of them, an offshoot of something more grand. Booths lined both sides of the street, and from the direction of the Court House Plaza they could hear the sound of amplified country music, roaring over the city.

‘I forgot again,’ Amanda confessed. ‘The Apple Festival. This madness will go on until midnight, or until the thunderstorm breaks it up. Whichever. Want to see a little?’

Outside the parked car, the din had risen to massive proportions. They followed two clowns dressed like red Delicious apples, sampling fare at each of the booths as they passed. Apple dumplings, apple pies, apple jelly, apple jam, apple bread, apple tarts, apples, apple juice, apple sauce, apple cider—there seemed to be no end to it all.

‘A once-a-year frenzy,’ Amanda chuckled. ‘To celebrate the apple harvest, one of the major crops around here. If it doesn’t rain too hard or too long, they’ll close the street for square dancing after a bit. What’s that you’re drinking?’

‘I don’t know. Something apple they had at that last booth. Under the counter, it was. It certainly has cleared my headache. I feel a lot better.’

‘You look a lot better, too. Your cheeks are blossoming. You sure you don’t know what it is?’

‘Well—now that I think of it, the man said apple juice or apple jack, so I took the apple jack. Lovely stuff. There’s still a little bit left in my bottle. Want a slug?’

‘No wonder you’re feeling better,’ Amanda roared. ‘That stuff is pure dynamite, Katie. It’s a brandy, made by distilling apple cider. You’re higher than a kite, girl!’

‘No such a thing!’ she responded valiantly, but her eyes would not quite focus. ‘Am I?’

‘Yeah, you am, lady. And we’d better get back to the car before they arrest you for driving a wheelchair to endanger.’

They barely made it back to the shelter of the car. Little things seemed so funny. They collapsed on the seat and watched the storm clouds chase revellers off the street, before Amanda managed to jam the key into the starter lock, and the Mercedes began to purr at them.

The drive back up the mountain went slowly, but happily. The massive drops of rainwater smashed at the car, bouncing high off the hood before they disintegrated, and wind tugged at the front wheels and threatened to sweep them off the road. The normal thirty-minute trip took them over an hour, and the setting sun was peeping through breaks in the storm clouds as they pulled up to the gates. There was a fresh-swept smell to the world.

Somebody had been waiting for them. No sooner had Amanda parked the car, then Mary came out, pushing the motorised chair, and directly behind her, Harry. Katie sat still in the car, feeling a bubbling mischief within her, and trying to stifle the hiccups that had just assailed her. Amanda was still laughing.

Harry pulled the door open, kissed Katie very thoroughly, then whistled as he swung her up into her arms and transferred her to the chair. Her usual reaction was tangled up with the hiccups. Her heart beat wildly, she gasped for breath, and her knees rattled. He stood over her with that foolishly amiable smile on his face, watching.

‘Don’t do that!’ she finally mustered up enough breath to say.

‘Don’t do what?’ he asked pleasantly.

‘Apple jack,’ Amanda tossed in as she strode laughingly up to the house with Mary.

‘Don’t stare at me like that!’ she retorted, and wheeled the chair around. But her momentary anger passed in a cloud of hiccups, and suddenly he became the Perfect Knight. She smiled up at him. He was acting naturally—a pleasant smile, showing those perfect teeth, unruly hair, casual dress, and a smile she could drown herself in. And why shouldn’t I take what I can get of it, her confused mind asked. ‘To hell with Eloise.’ It would have been the perfect statement, but two hiccups interrupted it in its middle.

‘What was that about Eloise?’ he asked. That deep
basso profundo
voice again.

She recalled instantly the night they had met, when, in true operatic style, she had cast the bass as the villain of the piece. ‘And to hell with the opera, too!’ she said very firmly.

‘What in the world are you talking about, woman?’ he asked.

‘I was just—Harry, if I ask you a very important question, would you give me a straight honest answer?’

‘Probably not,’ he laughed. ‘I learned a long time ago to be careful when dealing with women—especially women who have been drinking apple jack.’

Katie looked around her. Amanda had disappeared into the house, having been met at the door by Jon. Mary was almost at the house, and very consciously trying not to observe what was going on next to the car. So chance it, Katie told herself.

‘Harry King,’ she said as sternly as she could manage, ‘when you kiss me, I go all to pieces. And you know that! Yet all you do is put your hands in your pocket and whistle up some stupid tune. Is that all the effect it has on you? If so, I want you to stop all this nonsense, completely and immediately. You hear me?’

‘My, you certainly have worked up a deal of courage,’ he laughed. ‘Bottled? I can’t explain it to you right this minute, Katie. You’re not a man, and you’d have a hard time understanding, even if you weren’t three sheets to the wind.’

‘You don’t have to make a Federal case about a few tiny drinks,’ she snarled at him. ‘I know all about the birds and the bees, and the difference between men and women!’ Which was a very long sentence to wedge in between the rapidly increasing hiccups.

‘I doubt if you do,’ he chuckled. ‘Katie, I have the distinct impression that you don’t know beans!’ And he leaned over to kiss her again, proving his point. But there was troubled concern in the depths of his deep blue eyes.

Another
week had passed, taking them further into October. Surprisingly the warmth of summer held on, with cloudy humid days, star-lit nights, and a chill only after the sun had ducked behind the western peaks.

‘Weather’s always a problem at this time of year,’ Harry told her. ‘We’re lucky to have the apple-picking complete in the valley. There’ve been so many delays that the harvest season north of us may be in serious trouble.’

‘What kind of trouble?’ Katie asked, out of ignorance. They all turned and stared at her. Even Eloise knows more about apple harvesting than I do, Katie told herself. Dummy! Keep your mouth shut!

‘The apple crop is picked mainly by Jamaicans,’ Harry explained. ‘They are hired in teams for the season. They start in the southern orchards and work their way north. So if one particular area isn’t ready, it poses a real scheduling problem for the rest.’

‘So there!’ Eloise whispered at her as she and Harry left the house.

‘Damn!’ Katie snarled. It’s like walking on eggs, girl. Step carefully, don’t you dare break a shell—keep your guard up. Maybe I ought to go home.

Aunt Grace was rubbing her hands with glee as she watched the others disappear. ‘Wonderful,’ she gushed, ‘Our plan is working miraculously!’

‘I guess you must be right,’ Katie laughed. ‘What plan?’

‘You know, for goodness sakes,’ Aunt Grace said as she struggled with a chair. ‘I hate these folding things. You have to be a contortionist to get into them, and a muscle-freak to get out again. You know. Our plan to trap Harry. Katie, you don’t have trouble remembering things, do you?’ The tiny old woman peered anxiously up at her companion.

‘No,’ Katie replied, ‘I remember well enough. I don’t believe it, but I remember. So we’re doing well?’

‘Significantly. Haven’t you noticed that ever since the barbecue Eloise has been almost in hiding? You’ve scored a million points, my dear.’ She rubbed her hands together again. ‘Take a look out the window. The pair of them are having a real knock down drag-out fight on the patio. Isn’t that wonderful. You’ll want to be married in white, of course?’

‘Whoa up!’ Katie exclaimed. ‘Now just wait a darn minute. So we had a good week. That doesn’t mean I plan to marry the man. Why he’s the most arrogant, pig-headed man in the world!’

‘Yes, he is,’ Aunt Grace sighed happily. ‘Isn’t that wonderful? But you’ll tame him in time. So wonderful. And next week, when we all are in Knoxville, you’ll have plenty of opportunities for advancement.’

‘I think there’s some misunderstanding. I don’t plan to go to Knoxville. There’s no way I could get around in those crowds. No way!’

‘Of course not, dear. That’s the advantage. There’ll be you and Harry here, all alone—except for Amanda and Eubie and the boy, of course. Just enough chaperons to meet requirements, and not enough to stop any hanky-panky. Wonderful!’

Katie shook her head. ‘There’s not going to be any hanky-panky,’ she retorted stiffly. ‘And I hope you haven’t raised that subject with Harry?’

‘No indeed, my dear. He always has plenty of ideas of that sort for himself. No need to prime
his
pump. Good work!’ She struggled out of the chair, her parchment lips dropped a light kiss on Katie’s forehead, and she wandered off, making absent-minded comments about dinner.

Katie wheeled out to the now vacant pool, and settled herself in her chair. Her eyes caught the flashes of lightning to the west, and the horse-head clouds billowing in a mad rush over Little Bald Mountain. And yet, directly above her head, the sky was brilliant blue. The storm was close; you could feel it. The birds were quiet. Even the grasshopper chorus had disappeared.

A large masculine hand touched her shoulder, and a finger ran through her disordered, wind-blown hair. ‘Don’t do that, Harry,’ she said, but not too severely.